Similarly, the generalist Decents (Zionists all but with a few other violent racist staples thrown in) are in apoplectic why oh why mode what with Boko Haram and ISIS threatening democracy and much else besides and the Egyptian coup to defend. I didn't say being a Decent was easy.
The Decents have mainstreamers like David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and many others who I hardly ever read because, well, I always think I know what they're going to say without reading them and then looking at various tweets like this Flying Rodent chap's my prejudice is usually confirmed. To list the Decents out doesn't really do justice to their ideology/political persuasion. It dominates the discourse in the mainstream media on such things as Israel and foreign interventions/wars but it tends to be more shouty than the run of the mill mainstream media and the card carrying Decent tends to denounce the rest of the mainstream for not being hard enough on leftists who never get a lookin in the mainstream anyway. The late Decentpedia or Encyclopedia of Decency is very good on er, Decency.
So what's new? Nothing should be new in Decency, they've said it all before and when matters arise you just know what they're going to say but there is a new blog of Decency with the most ludicrous name ever imagined. It's called The Gerasites. Really it's a blog purporting to be followers of the late Norman Geras. Norman Geras was one of those intellectual marxists who later on in life decided that intellectual and marxist weren't such nice things after all so he ditched both. In common with a lot of the Decents I don't think he owned up to ditching marxism. They usually claim that it ditched them. Something like that.
When I saw the name, The Gerasites, I assumed it couldn't be anything to do with acolytes of Norman Geras because I thought even the worst of them wouldn't be so ridiculous. It crossed my mind that it could be anti-Gerasites having a laugh at the expense of the er, Gerasites. It also occurred to me that it looked like the kind of putdown that Enver Hoxha would throw at his enemies, like The Titoites.
Jeez, I'm falling over myself here. I see that an Artful Hoxha has picked up on this new blog in a Flying Rodent twitter conversation:
@flying_rodent jesus christ there really is a group called Gerasites
— Artful Hoxha (@TomWaits4NoMan) August 13, 2014
Even a guy with the name the Artful Hoxha (UPDATE 01:48 Aug 27, 2014): He's now changed his name but it was Artful Hoxha) can't quite believe there's a supposed group blog called Gerasites!
Of course I could be missing some self-parody here like, yes these people are followers of Norman Geras but since his imperialist turn is pretty common among former leftists in the mainstream media there's no need to sanctify His, I mean, his name. But it's not self-parody, these people are serious.
I say "these people" though the "about" bit is rather vague as to who they are in fact it doesn't say anything.
The home page is simply the latest article followed by previous ones. The main person behind it seems to be some Jamie Palmer chap and I noticed Harry's Place's Sarah Annes Brown in the comments hedging her bets about whether to become a full blown Gerasite.
But the bit that makes me think that even Gerasites are tired of Gerasism is the sub-heading. Take a look:
Really, that's all it says. Liberal hawks, Eustonites, Anti-Anti-West Left, etc? Etcetera? What's that about? They put etcetera in place of pro-Israel? They couldn't be bothered to say "anti-totalitarian"? What's going on? Are the Gerasites tired of Gerasism? Sure, why wouldn't they be?
The Gerasites
Liberal hawks, Eustonites, Anti-Anti-West Left, etc
No comments:
Post a Comment